Women in the Iliad

Women cannot take part in the main action because they don’t fight (Penthesilea?). They do however propel the plot:
Abduction of Helen as cause for whole war
Agamemnon taking Briseis as cause for Achilles’ anger
Agamemnon refusing to ransom Chryseis as causing the plague
Trojans fighting to protect their womenfolk – Hector explaining why he must fight as he doesn’t want Andromache to be enslaves
Greeks too don’t want to die and cause their wives pain

Women who are being fought over have no control over what happens, particularly captive women like Chryseis and Briseis.
They do have value – they are prized as desirable objects. Achilles offers them as prizes at the funeral games of Patroclus.
They are passed around like pawns; they are the physical representations of the men’s honour. The exchange of women reflects the men’s power, whether this exchange is in war or in peace (marriage).
They don’t speak much. Chryseis doesn’t even have her own name – she is just daughter of Chryses.

Description of Trojan women going about their everyday life, and the family life of Hector/Andromache adds pathos as we know this world will be destroyed imminently
Book 6 shows the division between the world of men and women. Feeling that Hector doesn’t belong there (bloodied hands, won’t accept female comfort, rushes away).
Hector says to Andromache ‘go to the house and busy yourself with your own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and tell your handmaids to ply their work: and war will be a concern for men’.
This world as contrast to world of battlefield, allows readers to compare, evaluate. Women’s world closest to what men’s is in peacetime.

Women suggest there is alternative to kleos system, that life and family are worth cherishing. Women can’t win kleos.
Hector is pulled in two ways, as Andromache wants him to survive, the life of a family rests in continuity, his male obligations pull him to fight and die.

Chryseis is silent
Women usually have speeches in the context of funerals, in lamentation, one of the only times when it is appropriate for them to speak. Gives them an important function as commentators on events and thus allows them to articulate some of the great issues of the poem.
Briseis laments the death of Patroclus.
Helen gives the background of the Greek men on the wall in 3
Helen (3) and Andromache weave: artistic creators. They are in charge of what stories shall be woven, which events remembered. Metaphor of weaving as narrating
In 24, the three lament Hector’s death: they are not just bystanders, they are deeply involved in the action

Hector’s interactions with these women broaden his character
First he meets the crowd of women, representing general apprehension in the city
Hecuba meets him in front of the palace, symbol of the generations of Troy and his need to defend the city. She is anxious for him, addresses him as teknon, tries to get him to eat and drink. He refuses.
Helen portrayed as a strong woman married to a weak man. Helen offers him a seat with sexual overtones. He refuses.
Lastly he meets Andromache at the Scaean gates, the boundary between their worlds. Both try to enter each other’s world. Hector had expected to find Andromache in the house/visiting a relation/making a sacrifice when she’s actually watching the battle. Equally he is in the city when he should be fighting. They leave their spheres out of anxiety for each other. He refuses to stay behind
These three scenes prepare us for book 22: we see his death first through the eyes of Achilles and the Greeks, then through the scream of Hecuba, which is heard by Andromache as she prepares him a bath. Death effectively described twice. We don’t get the same female perspective with the Greeks (except Briseis)

Orality

- Probably some time in the 8^th century

- Mycenaeans wrote with Linear B but this died out in the Dark ages

- Writing with the Phoenician alphabet wasn’t widespread until the 5^th century so the poem was composed for a primarily oral society

Characters often described with the same groups of adjectives (‘epithets’): “Agamemnon, lord of men”, “swift-footed Achilles”. It’s important that these stock epithets often exactly fill the cola created by caesurae. Normally not more that one metrically equivalent formula for a particular name.
Lines and whole passages repeated verbatim
Scenes like feasts or putting on armour often described in very similar ways (‘type-scenes’). Paris arms in Book 3, Agamemnon in Book 11, Patroclus in Book 16, Achilles in Book 19. Order in which their armour is described is identical.

Analytics think the Iliad is a patchwork of earlier songs woven together by Homer. They try and find different strata within the poem.
Unitarians believe it was composed by a single gifted author
Milman Parry: Iliad is an orally devised work, composed in a tradition of formulaic language. Text must be composed in a way that makes it easy to remember.
Research in Yugoslavia – South Slavic oral poets used similar techniques in the 1930s

If a stock epithet fills half a line, it gives the poet time to compose the other half
Formulae act as memory devices, as does the metre
Type-scenes give them structure for on-the-spot composition

Some people thought it was infringing on Homer’s creative genius to suggest his work was composed just to follow metrical rules. Prejudice from thinking oral cultures are inferior.
When analysing words have to decide if a word is chosen by the author for literary or metrical reasons
Sometimes epithets are well-chosen – Diomedes usually called ‘loud-voiced’ but this isn’t used in the Doloneia – sometimes they...

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